Urban critique

Architectural Science Review, Sept, 2006

Placing Words -- Symbols, Space, and the City, by William J. Mitchell. MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge MA 02142-1315, 2500. 224 pp., index. Pbk., Price: $US 16.95.

Dr. Mitchell, a former Dean of Architecture at MIT, is presently Professor of Architecture and Head of the Program of Media Arts and Sciences. He is well known as the author of several books on the complex interactions between the electronic media and the built environment. Readers of the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects have almost certainly seen the page of comment that he contributes each month; it is probably the wittiest part of the Journal, and the page most worthwhile reading.

This publication differs from his previous books: apart from the introduction it consists of reprints of articles [although some are slightly modified] published previously in The Scientific American, in the Royal Institute of British Architects Journal, and in part in a contribution to an Evocative Objects Project at MIT. There is therefore little continuity between the various chapters, but each is interesting and provocative in its own way.

The author questions the appropriateness of flashy office towers in Business Districts in an age of corporate websites, when companies have more effective means of conveying their importance, and he draws attention to the unsolved problems posed by the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers. However, he then notes that the wonderful views one can get in most locations perhaps make high-rises with good windows worthwhile.

He is critical of the conduct of the Iraq war, and particularly of the policies of President Bush and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, and draws a parallel between the devastation of Baghdad and that of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. He then describes an architectural design for a prison which can effectively be used for torture without containing any torture implements as such.

In a discussion of the detention camps for immigrants he notes that the concept originated in medieval Venice, where people arriving from suspect ports were quarantined for forty days [quaranta giorni] in the monastery of San Lazaretto, on an island well away from metropolitan Venice. However, he considers that in this modern age we should be able to do better than keep immigrants locked up for long periods.

There is an interesting article tracing the development of computers from the mainframe to the super-thin lap-top, but Mitchell notes that the cost has diminished just as dramatically.

Some readers at least will applaud Mitchell's critical comments on Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim Museum and on the new Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. However, he approves of Gehry's Stata Center at MIT: "I see it from my office window. I watch the facets rapping to the rhythms of the sun, and I cannot help recalling the whispered mutter of Hendrix against a tire-squeal of feedback guitar: Excuse me while I kiss the sky."